Pez, doughnuts and Hello Kitty: Colorful Shaw home reflects its owners | Home & Garden

Collections are a theme present in the décor, but by design they are not relegated to a tidy display cabinet or grouped together on a wall. Many of the collections are intermingled together appearing in almost every room, transforming the entire dwelling into a single collection of collections. Examples include assembled Legos kits like the orchids in perpetual bloom on the dining room table. (Is that another in the corner? No, those and a hundred other plants are real.)

Other collections include hundreds of coffee mugs (Tim’s middle name Is Coffey), Bundt pans in different shapes and colors on kitchen walls, signed concert posters in stairwells and Hello Kitty pillows wherever there is a bed or chair. The tiny faces of famous personalities sitting atop shelves and on the fireplace mantel are limited edition pop culture Funko collectibles of personalities like John Belushi. 

Barbie dolls are omnipresent, too, most still in their original boxes. They harken back to when Britt was in art school and for a year she lived her everyday, actual life dressed as she describes a “plus-size Barbie doll obsessed with doughnuts."

That unusual period is remembered through a series of photos blown up and displayed on the walls. One 3-foot-by-4-foot image shows her getting ready to party in a bathroom with doughnuts under the sink. 

In fact, Britt has a dozen doughnuts tattooed on her chest. “That way they are always close to my heart,” she says. A photo of a 3-foot-tall donut is propped atop the refrigerator in the kitchen near a sign that reads: "DONUTS-Open all night."

Pop artists Andy Warhol and Keith Haring are favorite artists, represented by posters of their work on walls, as well as a solid sleeve of tattoos of Warhol art on Britt’s right arm and leg.

Famed family photos taken at Christmas showcase creativity in photography. In one, son Lincoln at age 2 is dressed in a stovetop hat and thick black beard and holding an Abraham Lincoln doll. In another the twins at age 1 are shown covered in fake tattoos that mimic their heavily tattooed parents.

A cherished photo of her grandmother displays her image as a kaleidoscope pattern.

“I live in a bubble of love and inclusiveness,” Britt exclaims while explaining the meaning behind a neon sign aglow in the living room reading “Shantay, you stay.” The words have been made popular by drag queen entertainer and producer Ru Paul. Loosely translated, the meaning is an “encouragement for someone to stay and continue doing well.”

“I am a big fan of the costuming, creativity and self-deprecating humor it takes to be a drag queen,” Britt says.

While an ardent supporter of LBGTQ causes, the ever-present rainbow theme in the home is actually the result of her appreciation of colors arranged in a pleasing sequence. That is why the family collection of 100 plus Pez dispensers individually displayed on the dining room wall are arranged in the hues of a rainbow.

“I have been known to go into a friend’s house and rearrange their books so the spines are in a rainbow pattern,” she says acknowledging it is an urge she cannot control.

Her appreciation of color is also evident on the walls of the residence. The living and dining rooms are a deep purple, like the color of Britt’s hair the last seven years. The kitchen ceiling is pink with sparkles mixed in glittering in the paint. “I wanted to paint the walls like that “she says, but my husband did not agree. When he was gone on a trip, I painted the ceiling. It took him months to notice.”

In her son’s room the walls and ceiling colors were copied from Lego blocks. “We took Legos to Home Depot so they could custom mix the colors for a perfect match,” she says.

The areas of the home that are part of the original architecture, like the wooden staircase, the stained-glass window on the staircase landing, and the wooden fireplace mantel are off limits to Britt’s creative urges. She has promised her family, parents, and in-laws she will not touch them.

“My home is my little creative space, someplace where I want to be,” she says, adding that “it is my self-care. I am cool with excess.”

“When friends come over, they say everything looks good here, but that it is not their style,” Britt says. “When I go to their house my thought is that they have too much empty wall space!”